Alec Baldwin Wins Emmy for Most Important TV Performance of 2017

“I suppose I should say, ‘At long last, Mr. President, here is your Emmy,’” Alec Baldwin joked during his Emmy acceptance speech Sunday, hearkening back to host Stephen Colbert’s monologue—which posited that if Donald Trump had ever won an Emmy for The Apprentice, he never would have run for president in the first place. Not letting an opportunity to take a dig at Trump pass him by, Baldwin—who had just won the award for supporting actor in a comedy series—also wondered if perhaps he and his oft-pregnant wife managed not to conceive this last year because of his famous Trump impression: “All you men out there, you put that orange wig on, and it’s birth control, trust me.”

After thanking fellow winner Kate McKinnon and the rest of the cast, Baldwin paused to assure his colleagues in the room that “what we do is important.” Though that is a frequent sentiment on these self-congratulatory occasions, in this case, Baldwin is absolutely right.

It should surprise absolutely no one that Baldwin, the actor behind arguably the most discussed, lauded, and highly scrutinized TV performance in the last year, walked away with his third Emmy Award Sunday night. As host Stephen Colbert pointed out in his monologue, what would the year even have been without Baldwin’s Donald J. Trump? Both Baldwin’s nomination and win here, however, are obviously something of an unusual case. Though he may hold the record for most frequent host in Saturday Night Live history, Baldwin is obviously not a full member of the cast—nor has he ever been. But Baldwin cropped up enough times this year (reportedly, whenever his schedule and S.N.L.’s private-plane-shuttle-service would permit) to disqualify him from the guest-star category.

That category shift means that his win, alongside Dave Chappelle and Melissa McCarthy for guest star and Kate McKinnon for supporting actress, is far and away the most acting Emmy wins S.N.L. has garnered during a single season in its long history. In any other year, it was lucky to get even one.

Video: Is Kate McKinnon Already an S.N.L. Legend?

Of course, Baldwin deserves a massive amount of credit for that success, as do Lorne Michaels and Tina Fey for having the idea to cast him in the first place. A rising tide carries all boats, and the increased focus on Baldwin’s Trump (and, for a time, McKinnon’s Clinton) meant that S.N.L. enjoyed record-smashing ratings. In fact, though it may not have pulled in the same ratings numbers as other shows—like the much-nominated freshman series This Is Us—S.N.L. enjoyed a rarified place in the cultural conversation shared only, I would argue, by the Emmy-ineligibleGame of Thrones.

The primacy and relevance of those two shows—enhanced by a social-media-obsessed fandom—hearkens back to the less crowded days pre-Peak TV, when discussion around the water cooler was less scattered across the thousands of shows available to watch. But while Netflix and other providers of nonstop entertainment may have disrupted the culture of shared TV fandom, this season of S.N.L. rose above. “Did you see that sketch?”—a phrase that had been fading in recent years as S.N.L.’s finger slipped off the pulse—surged again in this season thanks, in large part, to Baldwin’s wicked impression.

Baldwin can’t (and shouldn’t) give Trump’s early, rage-induced Twitter reactions to S.N.L. all the credit for making his portrayal popular. (If we were handing out Emmys for the objects of Trump’s Twitter obsessions, we would be here all night.) But the knowledge that Trump was (at least at first) watching and reacting to Baldwin and his fellow late-night players understandably added drama, intrigue, and a must-see quality to the performance. The further rumor that these S.N.L. sketches could (and, ultimately, probably did) topple members of Trump’s Cabinet added further urgency to the work Baldwin and friends were doing.

So while Baldwin’s win may not be the biggest story of the night, this lone award added to the actor’s already-statue-crowded mantlepiece represents the single most defining TV performance of the 2016-2017 season.